Alsace- Colmar, Strasbourg, etc.

To kick off our Christmas vacation, we began with a short school trip to northeastern France. In the region of Alsace, located just on the border of France and Germany, are several quaint little towns that are well known for their Christmas festivities. This region has apparently be fought over between France and Germany for some time; obviously it is currently French, but there was still A LOT of German influence in the restaurants, languages spoken, architecture, and culture in general. So day one began with a lengthy drive to a little town called Colmar. There wasn't really any huge attractions to see in any of the towns, but it was still fun. It would have been a lot more fun had I not been still sick, but I tried to make the best of it.

Once we got to Colmar, we began trapsing (sp?) around the town; it and all the other towns we visited were full of Christmas markets, little booths set up where people sold bread, wine, cheese, meat, ornaments, you name it. As we were walking, we began to hear a lot of cheering and commotion, so we turned around to find a huge protest marching towards us. Marvin and Stephen had no idea what the people were protesting, but of course they joined in, as did nearly everyone under the age of 25. We left them to their protesting and continued on our way, shopping and walking, and walking and walking some more. My feet were not very happy with me from walking all day in my heels for the interview the day before, and it was cold, and I was sick, so I called it an early day and took a long, hot bath and to bed I went. It was wonderful.

The next day at breakfast, Marvin and Stephen pulled out a couple cans each of what looked to be something exactly like cat food. We dared not to, but had to ask. Apparently, after protesting for a while, they popped into a grocery store and decided to buy the cheapest food they could possibly find with the money the school had given us for food during the trip. Thus, they bought three cans each of this nasty looking...stuff. They weren't sure if it was dog food or not when they bought it, but they ate it that night, said it tasted and smelled just as nasty as it looked but they were going to eat them because they bought them and they are cheap and refused to spend more on food. Our professors looked at the cans and at first joked with them and said, "yes it is dog food you bought!", but it turns out it wasn't. Just something very close to it. So after we departed Colmar, we drove for a bit before stopping at a concentration camp from WWII. We spent a couple of hours there walking around in the snow before continuing on to Strasbourg. It was interesting being there in the snow and cold thinking it was a little chilly for us and imagining the Jews there without any kind of warm clothes. It was a bleak picture.

We arrived at Strasbourg and did pretty much the same thing there that we did in Colmar. We checked into our hotels and had a bit of free time before meeting back for a boat ride. Let me tell you, at first I was not at all thrilled about the idea of a boat ride in the cold while being sick, especially rememing the freezing boat ride we had in Paris, and that was in October. But this was quite nice, it was a covered boat. :) I heard a rumor that some of the guys were going to walk to Germany, since it was so close (only 6 km) , just to say they did. Not sure if that ended up happening. After our boat ride we wandered around some more, went into a really cool old church, went to the pharmacy for some hard core medicine, wandered around the market where I got some AMAZING home-made apple cider, found a really cool huge, four story bookstore, took pictures of all the pretty lights that lit of the city and the buildings, and finally headed back to the hotel where we decided to enjoy another hot drink in the hotel lobby warmth.

Friday we got up quite early and headed into our last little town. At this point we were kind of marketed out, so a group of us walked around a bit to see the city before finally finding the only open cafe at that hour of the morning and spending the rest of our free time drinking hot drinks and talking. Afterwards, we headed back towards Collonges and arrived to find a good 5-6 inches of freshly fallen snow! It was gorgeous! Unfortunetely, the power cord for my computer is broken, so until my parents arrive with a new one for me (bless them) I will not be able to post the pictures from the trip, but they're coming.